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Recommendations with Japanese lyrics, or where to find it?
We have a language learner in our household and I am tired of listening to J-pop at random on road trips. Do any of you music lovers have japanese language songs or even better artists or bands you really like?
Thank you very much
I'm going to assume you're tired of listening to modern jpop and base my recommendations on that.
Akina Nakamori - Fushigi (art pop, ethereal wave, synthpop)
Fishmans - Long Season (dream pop, neo-psychedelia, progressive pop)
Mariah - Utakata no Hibi (art pop, new wave)
Midori Hara - MiDo (city pop, dance pop)
The rest of the Japanese music I listen to is either instrumental or they perform in English.
What does the language learner like besides J-Pop?
*Because there is Hanabie, which is Japanese metal, whose lead singer can put most of her male counterparts to shame screaming wise.
*Man with a Mission More J-Rock, they also did the opening for Demon Slayer.
*BabyMetal Another metal group that pioneered the genre of Kawaii Metal (mix of J-pop and metal), like they are ones that made it.
*Hormone the Maximum Metal group that did one of the openings of Death Note back in the day. These guys are more shock rock/metal so caution might be required.
*There is also WagakkiBand. A J-Rock band that uses traditional Japanese instruments such as the shamisen and mixes them with modern instruments (not sure the proper term for it).
Major plus-one for WagakkiBand. They're actually the reason I majorly got into Vocaloid music. I've been dimly aware of it happening all along, but WagakkiBand's covers of Senbonzakura and Roki were quickly added to one of my playlists after discovering them...and then I found out that they were covers and found a really cool rabbit hole of new music to discover.
+1 for BabyMetal! Based on which I shall check out some of the others you listed myself - thanks.
This is a small collection of the best Japanese music.
Not knowing what other music you or they like, this list is sort of all over the place. I've tried to avoid the sort of Japanese pop music that Spotify, etc. seems to recommend a lot (at least that it recommends me), but I have included a few just straight pop-pop artists, which I've labeled if you'd like to skip it :) A few artists have already been recommended up-thread, but I think I've linked different songs so you can see more of what those artists offer.
Another Perfume fan! Before I dig in to the rest of your recommendations, do you know of any other similar work to Perfume (besides Yasutaka Nakata's other projects)? Off the top of my head only Aira Mitsuki comes to mind, specifically her mini-album 6 Force.
Edit: Just to contribute to the thread a bit more: for folk for who enjoy Perfume, Capsule (another one of Yasutaka Nakata's projects) would be the obvious recommendation.
Nakata recently remastered all of Capsule's albums and published them in their entirety on the official Youtube channel.
I love Capsule, too! All their songs I could think of off the top of my head last night were in English, though. The "World of Fantasy" and "More! More! More!" albums have been in regular rotation for me for I guess more than a decade lol.
But honestly, no, I don't know anything that isn't a Nakata act that sounds like Perfume. FEMM is sometimes kind of adjacent (although again, English), but the quality of their music varies a lot IMO. Snail's House kind of scratches the same itch for me, but they're definitely leaning into the "kawaii" sound in a way Perfume doesn't. I'll be excited to see if anyone else answers you with more suggestions that sound like them!
Edit: and I'm loving what I'm hearing of Aira Mitsuki so far!
Ace list! I am going to enjoy checking out all of this. <3
Hoshimachi Suisei (a vtuber): Stellar Stellar or the acoustic live version from The First Take
Sadistic Mika Band
Niagara Triangle
Atarashii Gakko
The Lethal Weapons
The Blue Hearts
My exposure to Japanese vocalists is super low, but I absolutely love the album Ai ga Nakucha Ne by Akiko Yano!
Gotta be NINGEN ISU. Get ready for the metal.
Yoko Kanno & The Seatbelts remain my favorite Japanese musical group. Not much help for learning Japanese though since it's mainly instrumental. They are the ones who revealed to me how much I can dig on Jazz and about ten other genres. You could always watch the Cowboy BeBop anime, then you'd get your Japanese lesson and enjoy a classic.
Most of my recommendations will be kind of old because I am not a huge fan of the more popular stuff these days, or really niche. You have been warned.
Imeruat is the band that Masashi Hamauzu has been doing since he left Square Enix. I would describe their music as being close to being experimental but it’s pop at the same time - and in some ways it feels like it’s an evolution of the last generation of experimental music. Hamauzu himself is an extremely accomplished classically trained composer but the ones under his name are probably not the ones you would be looking for (as they rarely have lyrics and he isn’t exactly what I would imagine kids are into these days, unless they are weird like I was).
Noriko Mitose is a really talented singer who has a voice that is perfect for Japanese folk songs. She has two albums (and maybe more that I haven’t heard of) called Yorlga and Yorlga II which are made with compositions from Yoshitaka Hirota - which are also the only reason I bothered to listen to her in the first place.
One of my favorite bands since I was a kid was Do As Infinity. They broke up some time before the 2010s but they came back minus their producer - who was basically the main reason why they had such great music to begin with. Worse, they lost their “great tour band”- they were always better in concert than they were in the studio. So go with either their old stuff or their newer stuff, but ignore the stuff in the middle. Their newer stuff had a particularly “anime OP” sound that seemed to come and go really quickly, but I thought it was pretty good.
Yellow Magic Orchestra - gotta listen to some oldies! They are basically the Japanese equivalent of The Beatles.
Kalafina and/or FictionJunction. Basically Yuki Kajiura’s name for more mainstream releases. Kajiura’s music is nothing short of visionary; in a way I think you could describe much of her music to be modern opera. The lyrics can often be very affective.
Check out Kazusou Oda's Gift
My favourite Japanese artist has got to be Sheena Ringo (椎名 裕美子). Her style varies with her albums and collaborations, but mostly rock, jazz, some electronica, and ever so experimental. Some tracks for you to try out:
My other favourite artists are:
Some assorted Japanese music I adore:
The Pillows. They're a 90's/00's alt-rock band and probably best known in the West as providing the soundtrack to the anime FLCL. I linked their album My Foot, but Happy Bivouac is the one that most of the FLCL songs are off of, so that's definitely worth a listen too if they catch your interest.
No specific recommendations, but the Japanese ska scene is pretty cool, so that's something you should check out.
I really enjoy just how normal and pleasant-sounding Vaundy's music is. It's a sort of pop-rock with pleasing, non-zany vocals. Try out his songs Odoriko and Tokyo Flash.
Just in the interest of expanding genre offerings, there's a surprisingly large selection of Japanese bossa nova and samba music out there - try out Paris Match, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgKDQCzvbqo
So I guess you don't want more J-pop?
Rock: Glim Spanky
Hard Rock: Band-Maid
Metal: Nemophila
If you don't mind more pop, I really like Yorushika (pop rock) as well as Kenshi Yonezu. For rock, there's RADWIMPS and ONE OK ROCK but they also sing in English depending on the song. For covers of various genres, there's kobasolo.
Sakuran-Zensen is pretty great if you're into punk/garage/rock.
I don't listen to too much Japanese songs, but I'll recommend some singers/band